Big-time college football teams now keep the same hours as street prostitutes. No coincidence, given that both hookers and “student-athletes” are pimped as part of the same, bottom-line, tight-ends-justify-the-means sales plan: Whatever it takes.

While most prostitutes prefer not to appear on TV — although those damned street surveillance cameras are providing them more and more TV exposure — the pimping of student-athletes by their schools is predicated on the opposite: appearing on TV. That’s where the money is.

So, Vanderbilt University, “The Harvard of the South” that increasingly provides full scholarships to athletes who would place the school in disrepute and its students in great peril — four now-former Vandy football players have been charged with an on-campus rape of an unconscious female student and a fifth was suspended for aiding its attempted cover-up — opened its football season Thursday night.

The kickoff, as per ESPN’s instructions, was at 8:20, Central Time, 9:20 here, roughly the hours when prostitute sidewalk traffic starts to build. Vandy’s opponent was co-SEC member Ole Miss. The SEC long ago let it be known that its student-athletes’ just-say-when presence — not to mention its member schools’ souls — is for sale to TV’s highest bidders.
Hey, ya want ESPN’s money and exposure or not? There are plenty of other colleges and conferences that would crawl on all fours to sign up.

Anyway, the game — another hideously protracted in large part to TV’s commercial finance needs — ended at midnight, 1 a.m. here. Not that it’s important, but classes began at Ole Miss three days earlier.

But that’s nothing. As might be asked in a college philosophy course, “If a football falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a sound?”

Rutgers also opened Thursday night, its pimped team sent to California to play Fresno State — an absurdity — except that ESPN money made it, and a 10:30 EDT kickoff, happen.

That Rutgers’ fans and students had no reasonable chance to see the end of this game didn’t matter. Didn’t matter if the game was played in Brisbane or Benghazi. TV money mattered. Rutgers for years has made it clear it will play any week night, anywhere — if there’s TV and TV money in it. That’s how schools “go big-time.”

Anyway, the DVR, even set for extra time, didn’t have a shot. The overtime game ran 4 hours, 32 minutes, ending here at 3:02 a.m., when even most pimps, prostitutes and Johns have called it a day.

But presumably Rutgers got paid, so the street-hooker’s code — “Do as you wish with me, mister, just as long as I’m paid” — likely was satisfactory for all contracted parties.

Say, if no one saw the end of Rutgers’ one-point loss, why count it? It’s that, “If a tree falls in the woods at 3 a.m.” thing, all a matter of philosophical perspective as debated and discussed in college classrooms.

ESPN caving to NFL on head case is no shock

Why should we be shocked, outraged or even alarmed that the NFL successfully discouraged ESPN from continuing its collaboration with PBS on an investigative documentary examining the NFL’s concussion crisis? Get real.

The same ESPN leadership funded and followed Barry Bonds as he broke Hank Aaron’s career home run record — an exclusive, provided Bonds’ reps could control content (read: no mention that even Bonds’ juice might be juiced). ESPN agreed to that!

While we’re at it, after each of Alex Rodriguez’s four HRs this season, Yankees announcers have dutifully noted — and with some admiration, too — that he now is one closer to Willie Mays for fourth on the all-time list.
Please, explain it or save it for those who wouldn’t know Joba Chamberlain from Neville Chamberlain. Why must Yankees fans always be treated as fully loaded morons?

* Now hear this! The Chevrolet, Tostitos, Capital One, Budweiser, Cialis, Mohegan Sun, Subway, Ace Hardware Keys to the 2013 Football Season are as follows:

“Most tickets are priced between $6 and $11, good value for the entertainment value.

“At a recent game, the PA man announced that Dwight Gooden was in attendance and would be signing autographs beneath the grandstand.

“When I reached the table where Gooden was signing, I was appalled to see that the price of each autograph was $25 — more than twice the cost of an average game ticket.”

Christie, Carton combine on crude

If N.j. Gov. and likely presidential candidate Chris Christie’s intention in co-hosting with Chris Carton on WFAN/MSG’s “Boomer & Carton,” Monday, was to remind folks that he can be an undignified, crude, trash-talking, name-calling not-so-funny wise-guy — if that’s his sense of populism — then he succeeded!

Speaking of local politicians, we’ve received scores of lookalike submissions for this one: Anthony Weiner and ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap.

* Jeff Saturday, former Colts’ center now a rookie ESPN analyst, Thursday said “if North Carolina can get a seven- or 14-point lead early, it can beat South Carolina.” Also on Thursday, if I had known the coffee cup had a metal decoration on the outside, I wouldn’t have put it in the microwave.

* A woman’s place: ESPN lists 16 college football sideline reporters and one for “Monday Night Football.” Only four of the 17 are male.

* See the Blue Jays score two to make it 4-0 in the first against the Yankees on Tuesday? J.P. Arencibia, having struck out, forced a bad throw when he ran to first off a passed ball. Had he been Robinson Cano, the catcher could’ve walked the ball to first or waited for Cano to sit back down in the Yankees dugout before tagging him out. (But we’re not supposed to be smart enough to notice such things.)

* Last week ESPN’s Ron Jaworski declared that Niners QB Colin Kaepernick “could become one of the greatest quarterbacks ever.” From that and there, ESPN generated its own bogus news, asking other ESPN TV and radio people to comment, on-air, about Jaworski’s statement. Soon, Kaepernick, too was asked. And that’s how ESPN rolls.

* As this Time Warner vs. CBS hassle drags on, remember: Big cable operators only tell the truth in private. TW for years didn’t clear the NFL Network, claiming that subscribers didn’t want it. After it cleared NFLN, TW pushed it as a channel subscribers can’t live without!